Living the Question Blog - Paul Reynolds Kauai » pronoia

Luminous tease

Paul Reynolds — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:56:13 +0000

Reading at Koloa and Anara practices 7/8/2010

Change yourself in the way you want everyone else to change

Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be jerks
Avoid thinking about winning the lottery while making love
Brainwash yourself before someone nasty beats you to it
Confess big secrets to people who aren’t very interested
Write a love letter to your evil twin during a lunar eclipse
Fool the tricky red beasts guarding the Wheels of Time
Locate the master codex and add erudite graffiti to it
Dream up wilder, wetter, more interesting problems
Change your name every day for a thousand days
Exaggerate your flaws till they turn into virtues
Kill the apocalypse and annihilate Armageddon
Brag about what you can’t do and don’t have
Get a vanity license plate that reads KZMYAZ
Bow down to the greatest mystery you know
Make fun of people who make fun of people
See how far you can spit a mouthful of beer
Pick blackberries naked in the pouring rain
Scare yourself with how beautiful you are
Simulate global warming into your pants
Stage a slow-motion water balloon fight
Pretend your wounds are exotic tattoos
Sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees
Plunge butcher knives into accordions
Commit a crime that breaks no laws
Sip the tears of someone you love
Build a plush orphanage in Minsk
Feel sorry for a devious lawyer
Rebel against your horoscope
Give yourself another chance
Write your autohagiography
Play games with no rules
Teach animals to dance
Trick your nightmares
Relax and go deeper
Dream like stones
Mock your fears
Drink the sun
Sing love
Be mojo
Do jigs
Ask id

—Robert Brezny

Share and Enjoy:

Re-Branding God

Paul Reynolds — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:27:59 +0000

“Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson proposed that the single greatest contribution to world peace would come from there being over six billion different religions — a unique spiritual path for each person on the planet.
The Beauty and Truth Lab urges you to get started on doing your part to
make this happen. What will your religion be called? What rituals will you
perform ? Write down your three core tenets.

You’ll also need a new name for the Creator. “God” and “Goddess”
have been so overused and abused that most of us are numb to them.
And given the spiritual opportunities that will open up for you as you
explore pronoia, you can’t afford to have an impaired sensitivity toward
the Great Mystery.

Here’s an idea to stimulate your search: The Russian word for God is
“Bog.” The Basques call the Supreme Being “Jingo.” To purge your
psychic dockets of built-up fixations about deity, you might try singing
improvisational prayers to “Jingo Bog.”

Here are a few other fresh names to inspire you:

Blooming HaHa
Divine Wow
Whirl-Zap-Gush
Sublime Cackler
Chthonk Riddler

Since ancient times, China has hosted three religions: Confucianism,
Buddhism, and Taoism. Many Chinese people have cobbled together a
melange of beliefs gathered from alt three. This is different from the
Western way, which is to be faithful to one religion or another, never
mixing and matching.

But that’s changing in certain enclaves in North America, where growing
numbers of seekers are adopting the Chinese approach. They borrow
elements from a variety of spiritual traditions to create a personalized
path. Religious historians call this syncretism.

As you meditate on conjuring up your own unique mode of worship, think
of the good parts you’d like to steal from other religions.

Most religions designate a special class of people — priests, rabbis,
ayatollahs — to oversee official communications with the Source. This has
led to a prevailing assumption, even among those who don’t follow an
established faith, that we can’t initiate a divine conversation without the
aid of a professional class of trained mediators. Among some sects of the
ancient gnostic, in contrast, everyone was regarded as a potential
prophet who could experience epiphanies worthy of becoming part of the
ever-evolving doctrine.

The equivalent today would be if the Bible were regarded as an unfinished
text to which every Christian or Jew might be eligible to add new content.

As you create your own spiritual path, experiment with this do-it-yourself
approach. What might you do to eliminate the middleman and commune
directly with the Source ?

Excerpt from Pronoia the antidote for Paranoia by Robert Brezny

Share and Enjoy:

Bigger, Better , More Interesting Problems

Paul Reynolds — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:00:52 +0000

Reading at Yoga Waimea practice 5/8/2010

Is there anything more dangerous than getting up in the morning and having nothing to worry about, no problems to solve, no friction to heat you up? That state can be a threat to your health. If untreated, it incites and unconscious yearning for any old dumb trouble that might rouse some excitement.

Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It’s as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself—indeed, you make yourself—through the addles you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.

Conventional wisdom implies that the best problems are those that place you under duress. There’s supposedly no gain without pain. Stress is allegedly an incomparable spur for calling on resources that have been previously unavailable or dormant. Nietzsche’s aphorism, “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” has achieved the status of an ultimate truth.

We half-agree. But it’s clear that stress also accompanies many medioc re problems that have little power to make us smarter. Pain frequently generates no gain. We’re all prone to become habituated, even addicted to nagging vexations that go on and on without rousing any of our sleeping genius.
There is, furthermore, another class of difficulty—let’s call it the delightful dilemma—that neither feeds on angst nor generates it. On the contrary, it’s fun and invigorating, and usually blooms when you’re feeling a profound sense of being at home in the world…

Imagine a life in which at least half of your quandaries match this profile. Act as if you’re most likely to attract useful problems when joy is your predominant state of mind. Consider the possibility that being in unsettling circumstances may shrink your capacity to dream up the riddles you need most; that maybe it’s hard to ask the best questions when you’re preoccupied fighting rearguard battles against boring or demeaning annoyances that have plagued you for many moons.

Prediction: As an aspiring lover of pronoia, you will have a growing knack for gravitating toward wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. More and more, you will be drawn to the kind of gain that doesn’t require pain. You’ll be so alive and awake that you’ll cheerfully push yourself out of your comfort zone in the direction of your personal frontier well before you’re forced to do so by divine kicks in the ass.

In Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger, the other opportunity. There has been no English equivalent until now.
from Pronoia – by Robert Brezsny

Share and Enjoy:

Totally Crazy

Paul Reynolds — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:45:25 +0000

Reading at Waimea 02/06/2010

I kick my own ass and wash my own brain.
I push my own buttons and trick my own pain.
I burn my own flags and roast my own heroes.
I mock my own fears and cheer my own zeroes.

Nothing can stop me from teasing my shadow.
I’m full of empty and backwards bravado.
My wounds are tattoos that reveal my true beauty.
I turn tragic to magic and make bliss my duty.

I honor my faults till they become virtues.
I play jokes on my nightmares till I’m sure they won’t hurt you.
I sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees
and love songs with punch lines to anonymous seas.

I won’t accept gifts, that infringe on my freedom
I shun sacred places that stir up my boredom.
I change my name daily, pretend to be nobody.
I fight for the truth if it’s majestically rowdy.

Gravity fucks me and I fuck it back.
The sun is my sex slave, the moon smokes my crack.
I pump up my conscience with idiot laughter.
I’m living happily, in love ever after.

I brag about what I can’t do and don’t know.
I take off my clothes to those I oppose.
I’m so far beyond lazy, I work like a god.
I’m totally crazy;

In fact that’s my job.

—Robert Breszny

Share and Enjoy:

This is a perfect moment.

Paul Reynolds — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:04:55 +0000

Reading at Koloa practice 01/07/2010

This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking, dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.
Thanks to them,
from whom the painful blessings flow,
we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them,
from whom the awful teachings flow,
we are waking up.

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called “reality.”

And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul’s true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge of creating a New Earth. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we cannot let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; tap into our sacred rage and supercharge it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can’t afford to be consumed with our anger; can’t be obsessed and possessed by their danger.

Our mysterious bodies crave delight and fertility. Our boisterous imaginations demand fresh tastes of infinity.

In the New Earth we’re creating, we need lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We need radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

So I’m curious, my fellow creators. Since you and I are in charge of making a New Earth — not just breaking down the dying culture — where do we begin? What stories do we want at the heart of our experiments? What questions will be our oracles?

Here’s what I say: In the New Earth we’re creating, we will ridicule the cult of doom and gloom, and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate; we will summon the brilliance to praise and create.

No matter how upside down it all may appear, we will have no fear, because we know this big secret: All of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings. Life is crazily in love with us — brazenly and innocently in love with us.

The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

The winds and the tides are on our side, forever and ever, amen. The fire and the rain are scheming to steal our impossible pain. The sun and the moon and the stars remember our real names, and our ancestors pray for us while we’re dreaming.

We have guardian angels and thousands of teachers . . . provocateurs with designs to unleash us . . . helpers and saviors we can’t even imagine . . . brothers and sisters who want us to blossom.

Thanks to them,
from whom the blissful blessings flow,
we are waking up.

The roads they pave us,
the places they save us,
the tomatoes they grow us,
above and below us.

Their mysterious stories,
their morning glories,
their loaves and fishes,
granting our wishes.

The songs they sing us,
the gifts they bring us,
the secrets they show us,
above and below us.

Thanks to them,
from whom the blissful blessings flow,
we are waking up.

I’m allergic to dogma. I thrive on riddles. Any idea I believe, I reserve the right to disbelieve as well. But more than any other vision I’ve ever tested, pronoia describes the way the world actually is.

It’s wetter than water, stronger than death, and truer than the news. It smells like cedar smoke in the autumn rain, and if you close your eyes right now, you can feel it shimmering like the aurora borealis in your organs and muscles. Its song is your blood’s song.

Some people argue that life is strife and suffering is normal. Others swear we’re born sinful and only heaven can provide us with the peace that passes understanding.

But pronoia says that being alive on this rough green and brown planet is the highest honor and privilege. It’s an invitation to work wonders and perform miracles that aren’t possible in any nirvana, promised land, or afterlife.

I’m not exaggerating or indulging in poetic metaphor when I tell you that we are already living in paradise. Visualize it if you dare. The sweet stuff that quenches all of our longing is not far away in some other time and place. It’s right here and right now.

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew the truth:
“Earth’s crammed with heaven.”

—Robert Breszny

Share and Enjoy:

A Space to Commit Pronoia

Paul Reynolds — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:41:43 +0000

Reading at Koloa 05/11/09

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I am given unimaginable gifts;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is pure delight, To honor it is true devotion.

—-Jennifer Welwood
from Pronoia by Robert Brezny

Share and Enjoy:

Living the Question Blog - Paul Reynolds Kauai » pronoia

Luminous tease

Related Posts

Re-Branding God

Related Posts

Bigger, Better , More Interesting Problems

Related Posts

Totally Crazy

Related Posts

This is a perfect moment.

Related Posts

A Space to Commit Pronoia

Related Posts